Global Report:
Passover Across the Jewish World

It is the quintessential Jewish holiday – the time when Jews come together to celebrate our ancestors' freedom, and our own enduring peoplehood.  Across the Jewish world, JDC works to ensure that every Jew who wishes to do so can participate in a seder and join with the entire Jewish people in celebrating Pesach, the Festival of our Freedom.

As you will read, some will celebrate their first seder this year.  For others, the seder will mark the triumph of hope over despair and the enduring strength of the Jewish spirit. 

Each year, as more and more Jews gather together, the same phrase rings out in dozens of languages: "Next year in Jerusalem!"

Hag Sameach.

Understanding

"If you came all the way from Jerusalem to conduct Passover seders in Ukraine, the coming of the Messiah must be at hand."  With these words, the rabbi of the only synagogue in Chernovitsi, Ukraine welcomed Nimrod Pitsker and two fellow American students to his small town. 

Pitsker had come to join local Jewish students in leading a communal Passover seder for the Jews in Chernovitsi, one of hundreds of such seders that are part of the JDC/Hillel "Pesach Project" in the former Soviet Union.  "I was in the middle of a deeply fulfilling year in Jerusalem," says Pitsker.  "But helping lead seders in Ukraine was unlike anything I'd ever experienced."

Another American student had her own revelation. "Every year until the fall of the USSR my family included a fourth matzah at the seder in honor of those Jews not yet free to live Jewishly." 

"At one seder I told the participants of this custom.  A woman turned to me and said, 'Then you understand why there is so much we do not know.  You are young and know so much, and we are old and know so little – but you understand, we were not allowed.'"

Today, the barriers have fallen away.  This year at Pesach, Jews in their thousands will join in celebrating the seder – and understand, many for the first time, that they are part of a global Jewish family.  Everything else is commentary.

Last year, more than 50,000 Jews throughout the world – from the former Soviet Union to India, from Cuba to Eastern Europe – attended communal seders organized with JDC's help. This year, the numbers will grow.  Here are some examples of how JDC is helping Jews in communities large and small celebrate the holiday in far-flung areas of the globe.

Argentina –Jewish population: 220,000
For thousands of Jews left destitute by Argentina's economic and communal devastation, a family seder is now beyond reach.  To ensure that sudden poverty does not rob them of Jewish life, JDC – with support from Jane and Stuart Weizman – and the local Tzedaka Foundation are organizing 40 communal seders, enabling some 10,000 impoverished Jews to celebrate Passover and draw strength and hope from their fellow Jews.

Lydia, a volunteer worker in the Buenos Aires community, writes: "I don't have to tell you how difficult times are for our people in Argentina.  At least for Passover, we will be together and there is a great comfort in that."

Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) –Jewish population: 25,000
Since the Baltic States' independence, the Jews who are heirs to one of the greatest of pre-Holocaust communities have energetically reclaimed Jewish life with JDC assistance.  This year, Baltic Jews will mark a decade of communal seders that have now become tradition in the region's towns and cities – including in communities with as few as 40 people.

One of the most striking features of Passover in the Baltics is its diversity.  Special seders are held for Jewish families and for Jewish students, for Jewish singles and Jewish elderly, while JDC is helping 15 groups of six families celebrate the holiday in a traditional home setting.

Bulgaria –Jewish population 9,000
In Sofia, the capital of this former Communist-bloc country, JDC is helping organize group seders for families whose children attend Jewish youth programs and the Jewish day school, as well as seders for elderly participants in "Warm Homes."  At the city's home for the elderly, residents and their relatives have divided up the seder, with each reading a different section of the Haggadah. 

JDC is also helping local Jews hold communal seders – both in small communities throughout the country and in Sofia's Beit Haam JCC.  On the second night, families who attended the JDC Pesach Family Camp and learned to lead seders have invited three or four other families to a more intimate, home-like celebration held in various activity rooms at the JCC.

Former Soviet Union – Jewish population: 1-2 million
In this land where Passover's message of freedom resonates as clearly as anywhere in the world, Jews have eagerly embraced the celebration a seder offers.  Through the JDC/Hillel "PesachProject," over a thousand local Jewish students will fan out to Hesed welfare centers and JCCs, to small towns and even shtetls, to lead seders for an estimated 40,000 of their fellow Jews.

This year, these FSU students will be joined by over 100 fellow students from overseas – the highest number ever.  Among the visiting students from Israel, Western Europe and from Jewish communities across the United States and Canada is a group that is helping Jews in Rostov celebrate their first communal seder.

Israel
Pesach in Israel is a national experience, but also very much a family one.  Yet many older olim from the FSU have neither family nor a circle of friends with whom to share their joys and their fears during this grim time of crisis – or the holiday. 

JDC's "Warm Homes" help these lonely immigrants break their isolation by bringing groups together in home-based social gatherings.  This year, a special seminar has helped the hosts of many of these Warm Homes – themselves immigrants – learn to organize full or partial seders for their fellow members. 

Additionally, seders in five cities are drawing some 200 elderly immigrants, who were involved in the Hesed welfare centers in the FSU prior to their aliyah, back into the kind of warm, supportive, purposeful activity among their fellow elderly in Israel.

Slovenia –Jewish population: 120
With its enduring commitment to enable even the smallest of Jewish communities to sustain Jewish life, JDC has helped Jews in this former Yugoslav republic gather for communal seders in the capital, Ljublijana. 

Last year, the community set itself the goal of holding a completely kosher seder.  With JDC assistance, the local Jews kashered the kitchen in a city hotel, and drew not only local participants, but also visitors from Israel and Europe.

Slovenia's Jews then set themselves a new challenge.  As community member Dr. Irena Sumi writes, "This year's miracle will be the newly published Haggadah in the Slovenian language.  Our very own academic group has just finished the translation!